by Dan Abnett
Beside Malus, Vanhir was sorely pressed from both sides by three of the beastmen. His cold one was already backing away from the warriors, shaking his snout and blowing blood from his nostrils from a deep slash above his mouth.
Malus gave Spite his head and let the cold one pounce on one of the beastmen, while he aimed a vicious blow at the back of another warrior’s head. Spite crushed his victim under his clawed feet, while Malus sliced open the back of his target’s neck, causing the beastman to bleat in shock and panic. Vanhir chopped off the right arm of the third warrior, and within minutes the surviving beastmen were in full retreat, running down the long road as fast as their feet would carry them.
“Ready your crossbows and form up before the gate,” Malus commanded, mindful of the chorus of howls and roars echoing down the long wooded tunnel back the way they’d come. The highborn led Spite up the road toward the stone gateway. The cold one got to within ten yards of the gate and the raging energies beyond, and refused to take another step. “I cannot say I blame you,” Malus muttered, and slid from the saddle.
Lhunara, Vanhir and Dalvar, all that remained of the eleven knights who’d ridden with him from the Hag, reined in their mounts alongside Spite and brought their crossbows to bear down the length of the road. From the wild cacophony echoing down the leafy passage it sounded like all the daemons of the outer darkness were hot upon the druchii’s heels.
Malus reached into his saddlebag and drew out the Skull of Ehrenlish. The blackened relic seemed to glare at him with tangible loathing. Once, the feeling might have unsettled him; now, however, he had the measure of the spirit trapped within.
The highborn turned and regarded the raging energies beyond the portal. The very air seemed alternately gelid and charged with rapacious energies; violet and green lightning raged through billowing clouds of red and purple. From one heartbeat to the next the vista beyond the portal warped and shimmered. One moment Malus beheld vast, desert plains red as blood, another moment and it seemed he looked out on a vast, starry sky lit by hundreds of ancient suns. Another flash, and he beheld a flat, endless plain baking under a pitiless, red sun. Vast armies raged across that blood-soaked plain, fighting a war without end. Another flash, and he looked upon a land beneath a moonless sky. Under cold stars a ruined city of cyclopean towers waited for sleeping gods to rise and drown the universe in blood.
Malus watched the mad jumble of images and knew, deep in his bones, that he looked upon lands not of this world. He looked upon planes where even gods feared to tread, and he knew that if he stepped into that raging storm he would be lost for all eternity, like a handful of sand tossed into a stormy sea.
The highborn clutched the Skull of Ehrenlish. He could feel the energies of the relic reverberating through his hands as the shade was brought before the terrible ward it had once helped create.
What you can make, damned spirit, you can also unmake, Malus thought savagely. Steeling himself, he began to walk slowly and purposely through the dreadful gate.
Chapter Twenty
THE TEMPLE OF TZ’ARKAN
You spoke through my body once before, when you feared you would be lost in the land of the dead, Malus thought as he stepped beneath the rough arch of the portal. That peril is nothing compared to the one you face now Come forth, Ehrenlish! Open the gate or perish in the storm!
The highborn felt a tingle of nascent power wash over his body as he stepped up to the gateway. For all its rough-hewn appearance, he could sense that there were arcane mechanisms inlaid in the stone, waiting for the proper hand to summon them into use again. Malus held the blackened skull before him as he inched closer to the swirling vortex that raged beyond the arch.
Do you think me weak, Ehrenlish? Do you think I will not step into the fire? Then you are a fool. I will burn and you with me! A druchii seeks death in the face of failure. Open the gate or die with me!
There was a buzzing in the air. Malus could feel the skull begin to tremble in his hands. This close to the storm, the highborn could feel its warping pull against his skin, as though it were reaching out for him. Faces came and went in the shifting, nebulous clouds -cruel, twisted visages that leered hungrily through the archway. Whether they hungered more for the soul in the highborn’s body or the shade bound in the wire-wrapped skull, Malus could not say.
Blue fire began to lick across the surface of the relic, blowing fiercely over the curves of the skull as though it were being forced into the heat of a forge. Malus could feel the lines of silver wire turn hot in his hands. The end approaches, ancient shade! Are you ready to face those who wait beyond?
The back of the skull touched the raging energy beyond the gate, and the black, empty eye sockets blazed with furious life.
Ehrenlish drove spikes of fire into Malus’ brain, forcing himself into the highborn’s skull like a spearhead and thrashing angrily in the tortured paths of his brain. The highborn’s body went taut and his head arched back as it had in the stone circle of Kul Hadar. His mouth opened in a frozen scream, but jagged, blistering curses spewed forth instead.
Malus felt Ehrenlish’s spirit clench like a knotted fist inside his skull and felt his body begin to bend backwards, away from the otherworldly storm. NO! he raged, grappling with Ehrenlish in a contest of terrible wills. You think to master this body, foul spirit? Fool! You cannot master me. I am Malus of Hag Graef, and I bend to no one. Do as I command, sorcerer, or meet your doom!
For a moment, the highborn’s body trembled, caught between opposing forces. Then, inch by painful inch, Malus’ frame began to straighten again. The stream of raging curses slurred into a wordless growl of determination as Malus forced himself to take a tiny half-step forward and pressed the skull deeper into the vortex.
An agonised shrieking filled the air. The storm penetrated the skull, lashing at Ehrenlish and by extension into Malus. The spirit of the sorcerer gibbered and wailed at the touch of the storm, and Malus’ mind shrank from the impossible vistas that unfolded in his mind. Skies of liquid fire and seas of boiling skin. Terrible creatures with bones of ice and eyes that had beheld the first night of the world. And beyond them more terrible spirits still, ancient beings of incalculable wisdom and cruelty who stirred from their meditations and gazed across the immense gulf of the storm at the two beings struggling fitfully at its edge.
And then the words burst from Malus’ bloody lips. Buzzing shrieking words of power and intent that tried to wake the arcane mechanism of the portal and hold the great storm at bay. The skull jerked in the highborn’s hand and he felt more than heard the crack that raced along the curve of the braincase. Molten silver was running in hot droplets down the wire mesh, propelled away from the storm and falling toward Malus, splashing in sizzling droplets against his breastplate.
The highborn dimly sensed the engines of the portal trying to awaken, but something was wrong. They had lain idle too long with no hand to tend them, and now the paths that directed the shade’s power were spinning out of control. There was a groaning sound in the air, and Malus saw the irregular arch start to twist and deform like heated wax.
A shudder passed through Malus’ soul. The terrible storm was swelling. At first he thought it was because the arch was failing, but then he realised that the raging energies were being pushed aside by the passage of those ageless beings, as sea dragons shoulder aside the freezing waters of the ocean. They were reaching across the storm.
They were reaching for him.
Ehrenlish’s cries had reached an agonising crescendo. Bloody froth burst from Malus’ throat as the torrent of incantations poured into the air. He could feel the shade’s stark terror. It, too, felt the rising of the ageless ones, and in a fleeting moment of clarity Malus caught a glimpse of the fate that awaited Ehrenlish, and even his hardened soul quailed at the thought of it.
The gate wavered in the air and flew apart into molten gobbets of rock that were sucked into the hungry maw of the storm. The great sorcerous engines failed in a clap of thunder a
nd a blaze of terrible light, and a huge, clawed hand coalesced from the energies of the storm itself, closing about the sizzling surface of the skull. The bone turned to dust at the touch of that impossible hand, and the silver wire flared into mist, and the otherworldly storm that had seethed beyond the gate vanished as though it had never been, taking the shade of Ehrenlish with it.
Malus fell to his knees in the place where the Gate of Infinity had once stood. Steam curled from the joints in his armour. It felt like an eternity before he could hear the sound of his own heartbeat again, or put intent into coherent thoughts in his numbed mind.
When he could focus his eyes again, Malus could see a white road of skulls stretching ahead of him to a huge, stone edifice made of enormous slabs of the blackest basalt. It was a square, tiered structure with no windows or carven images that hinted at the glories held within. It was a temple of power, a place built not for venerating the unseen but to serve the ambitions of the worldly. The very sight of it lit the flames of desire in Malus’ savage breast.
The highborn rose to his feet, suppressing flashes of pain with a ruthless effort of will. Here was a triumph beyond all imaginings. He could sense it calling out to him. With the power secreted within the temple he would bend the entire world to his will.
Someone was calling his name. Malus turned, trying to focus on the sound.
“My lord! They’re coming!”
It was Lhunara. She and the rest of the warband sat astride their cold ones, facing back down the road from whence they’d come, just at the bend of the road, nearly a hundred yards away, Malus saw the beastman herd had gathered. A tremor went through their massed ranks, and isolated voices howled challenges at the distant riders. Malus guessed the mob had seen the storm come undone, and they were now working up the courage to attack.
The highborn glanced back at the temple. Sure enough, a low wall surrounded the structure, broken by what appeared to be a single gate. Malus raced forward and leapt into Spite’s saddle. “To the temple!” he cried, hauling on the reins. The warband turned as one and raced down the road, and the beastman herd broke into bloodthirsty cries and charged after them.
In moments the cold ones were racing through the plain gate of the temple wall, turning left and right across broad stone tiles worked with runes and carvings of daemonic skulls. “Bar the gate!” Malus ordered. He checked the height of the walls. There were no parapets, but a druchii standing on a cold one’s back could peer over it. “Lhunara, get the men against the wall! They can fire over it when the herd tries to force the gate.”
Vanhir and Dalvar pushed heavy gates made from basalt slabs into place. Thick iron bars fitted into holes in the bottom of each gate thudded into place into corresponding holes carved into the road. “This won’t hold them forever, not if they bring hammers,” Vanhir told Malus. “What do we do when they breach the gate?”
Beyond the gateway the road ran straight up to a simple entryway at the side of the great temple. Malus had already slid from the saddle and was walking swiftly towards the shadowy portal.
“Hold them off,” the highborn said simply, and disappeared inside.
Malus’ footsteps echoed hollowly down the narrow processional leading into the temple proper. No torches lined the walls, nor ironwork stands holding globes of greenish witchfire — instead the black walls seemed to radiate a kind of power that thinned the darkness somehow, like water added to ink. He could see clearly in any direction, but the weight of abyssal darkness hung about his shoulders all the same.
The silence in the great temple was palpable, like the funereal stillness of a tomb, and yet the highborn could sense a faint tremor of power suffusing the air. It was not so fierce and uncontrolled as the storm that had raged outside; rather, it seemed ruthlessly harnessed and infinitely patient, waiting to be summoned to life.
The processional led to a large, square chamber similarly devoid of ornamentation. Row upon row of humped shapes lined the floor to either side of the aisle, and it took a moment for Malus to realise that they had once been the shapes of servants. In life they had worn metal vestments and mantles of some kind, and those ceremonial clothes still remained, bent in positions of supplication towards the narrow aisle. The highborn wondered what kind of power — or awesome, numbing fear — could drive more than a hundred slaves to bend their heads to the stone floor and remain there, waiting in vain for the return of their terrible overlords, until finally they died there. The same could be said for the two massive suits of armour that still stood to either side of the doorway at the far end of the chamber. Their occupants had long since fallen to dust, but their empty armour still maintained their endless vigil.
Malus passed through the doorway into what appeared to be a large chamber for prayers and sacrifices to the four gods of the north. Great statues stood at four different points within the room, each with its own stained altar. The darkness here was palpable, pressing against him like a hundred clammy hands sticky with blood.
The great statues of the Ruinous Powers glared down at him with implacable hate, demanding his subservience and adoration. Muttering a prayer to the Dark Mother, the highborn crossed the room without sparing the idols more than a passing glance, and stepped through a doorway.
The space beyond was nothing less than cavernous. Heat and the stench of sulphur smote his face and neck. Malus stepped onto a floor of slate tiles that stretched across an open area the size of a small plaza back at the Hag. Ahead, he could see a dim, red glow through the haze of darkness, silhouetting a huge shape that seemed to descend from the vastness of the ceiling above.
Malus walked for nearly fifty yards across the tiles, until he reached the edge of a precipice The statue of an immense, winged daemon crouched at the very brink, its homed forehead bent to the tiles in a gesture of supplication. Frowning the highborn stepped around the statue and peered into the abyss beyond. Hundreds of feet below was nothing but fire and seething, molten stone… and a line of flat-topped boulders that seemed to hang in the air above the magma.
The highborn glanced at the large shape hanging above the fiery pit and saw that it, too, was an enormous, rough-hewn pillar of stone, carved with wide stairs that spiralled upwards to the temple’s next level. Unfortunately, they were also more than thirty yards away.
Malus stepped back and regarded the statue of the daemon once more. He noticed that its knobby back could also be seen as a set of cunningly carved steps. Carefully, he placed one boot on the top of the daemon’s head and took a step up. The stone easily supported his weight.
The highborn climbed the short flight of “steps” along the daemon’s back, until there was nothing but reeking air before him. Peering down, he saw the first of the floating boulders, perfectly in line with the statue’s back. A bit ostentatious, Malus thought, staring up at the distant staircase. But effective. The sorcerers were jealous of their power indeed. The question was how to make the boulders rise for him.
Force of will, Malus thought. What is sorcery, after all, but bending the world to one’s will? How else did Kul Hadar and Ehrenlish fight one another? How else did I force Ehrenlish to obey my commands?
Malus looked down at the stepping stones. Rise, he thought, focusing his will on them. Rise!
The stones remained where they were.
Rise, damn you! Malus thought fiercely, adding his rage to the force of his thoughts. In the name of dead Ehrenlish, obey your new master. Rise!
Nothing happened.
A growl escaped Malus’ lips. He cast about for another name to hurl at the implacable rock. “In the name… in the name of Tz’arkan, RISE!”
At once, Malus felt the power in the air thrum like a plucked chord. The stepping stones trembled, and then began to rise.
The highborn smiled triumphantly. Tz’arkan, eh? What kind of name is that, I wonder?
The stepping stones rose smoothly and silently through the air, their faceted lower halves glowing from the heat of the magma below. They formed a p
erfect set of steps that curved upwards and met the stairs high above the blazing pit. Steeling himself, Malus stepped from the daemon’s back onto the first stone, and was gratified to discover it was as stable as the very earth.
In minutes the highborn climbed the floating boulders to the staircase. As he stepped from each one, the stone plummeted back to its original position deep in the pit. By the time he reached the curving staircase, Malus felt like a petty god himself. The steps themselves appeared to be carved from alabaster; each riser worked with a cunning relief of dozens of small, naked figures, writhing in torment. Their faces were upturned, pleading for mercy, even as their shoulders and backs supported the weight of each stair. This is a place made for conquerors, Malus thought.
His smug grin faded a third of the way up the stair when he stumbled upon the body. It wore robes of a finer cut and a jewelled mantle that was similar to, but far richer than, those in the entry chamber below, and the hot, dry air had mummified the corpse almost perfectly. Malus was struck by the corpse’s gaping mouth, frozen in a rictus of terror. Nor did he miss the curved dagger in the body’s right hand, and the long, neat cuts along the withered veins of both forearms.
There were bodies everywhere, perfectly preserved by the heat. All of them had died violent deaths, slain by one another or dead by their own hand.
The second floor of the temple was given over to five large sanctums and the smaller quarters of the attendants who ministered to the needs of Ehrenlish and his cabal. Huge, broad columns of basalt, carved in the likeness of terrible daemons, supported the arched ceiling, and cold braziers made of bronze and dark iron stood at regular intervals along the broad corridors. Inserts of dark sandstone had been fitted among the black granite blocks of the walls. Each panel contained a bas relief of corpse-choked fields or ruined cities burning beneath the twin moons.
